Resist Not Evil

by Clarence Darrow

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Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Law, Nonfiction, Sociology, Crime, Economics

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

in 1857, Clarence Darrow, later dubbed "Attorney for the Damned" and "the Great Defender," was born. For a time he lived in an Ohio home that had served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. His father was known as the "village infidel." Darrow attended the University of Michigan Law School for one year, then passed the bar in 1878 and moved to Chicago. There he joined protests against the trumped-up charges against four radicals accused in the Haymarket Riot case. Darrow became corporate counsel to the City of Chicago, then counsel for the North Western Railway. He quit this lucrative post when he could no longer defend their treatment of injured workers, then went on to defend without pay Socialist striker Eugene V. Debs. In 1907, Darrow successfully defended labor activist "Big Bill" Haywood, charged with assassinating a former governor. His passionate denunciation of the death penalty prompted him to defend the famous killers, Loeb and Leopold, who received life sentences in 1924.

His most celebrated case was the Scopes Trial, defending teacher John Scopes in Dayton, Tenn., who was charged with the crime of teaching evolution in the public schools. Darrow's brilliant cross-examination of prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan lives on in legal history. During the trial, Darrow said: "I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure—that is all that agnosticism means." Darrow wrote many freethought articles and edited a freethought collection. His two appealing autobiographies are The Story of My Life (1932), containing his plainspoken views on religion, and Farmington (1932). He also wrote Resist Not Evil (1902), An Eye for An Eye (1905), and Crime, Its Causes and Treatments (1925). His freethought writings are collected into Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays. He told The New York Times, "Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either" (April 19, 1936). D. 1938.

More: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/monkeytr...

http://darrow.law.umn.edu/index.php?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...

Reviews

[Utsob Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

অনেকদিন পর এমন একটা বই পড়লাম যার বক্তব্য আমার পছন্দ হয়েছে খুব আবার তা নিয়ে সন্দিহান (মানে আমার স্বভাবসুলভ সন্দেহের চেয়ে বেশি সন্দিহান)।

ড্যারো সাহেবের কথায় আর্মি ও শাসনব্যবস্থার আমাদের ক্ষতি ছাড়া আর কিছু হয় না, আইন ও শাস্তি মূলত দমনপীড়ন এবং তাতে আসলে অপরাধ কমে না। মোটের ওপর যুক্তিগুলো ঠিকই আছে। এখনকার আইনব্যবস্থা মুখে যদিও দৃষ্টান্তস্থাপন ও ন্যায়বিচারের কথা বলে কিন্তু অনেকাংশেই আসল নিপীড়নমূলক।

আমি আসলে ওঁনার যুক্তিতে তেমন একটা খুঁত পাইনি মানুষের ওপর অগাধ বিশ্বাস ছাড়া। এই একটা জিনিস আমি কোনোভাবেই আর করতে পারি না।

[Logan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought provoking, to be sure, but ultimately I disagree with Darrow's conclusions.

While the criminal justice system is indisputably broken, I think Darrow errs in ascribing the causes of crime to being purely environmental, and I especially disagree with his conception of criminal behavior as a "disease." He denies the role of free will, reducing men to nothing more than the product of their environments, not as the thinking, acting, purpose-driven beings they are. Having a poor upbringing or living in a bad environment do not "cause" crime, they just change the incentives.

Darrow's commitment to non-violence is mostly admirable but, like Gandhi, he goes too far, denying that violence is acceptable even in self-defense or to stop someone from committing a heinous act. I wish he had gone into more specifics about his theory of criminal justice. For example, how would he deal with a rampaging serial killer who showed no signs of remorse? This book gives the impression that he would simply give the man a hug and hope for the best, hardly an acceptable course of action in my view. In fact, Darrow never talks about the victims of violent crimes, expressing sympathy only for the criminals themselves.

Sending non-violent offenders to prison in order to pay their debt to "society" serves no useful purpose, but neither does allowing murderers and rapists to roam free with no consequences for their actions.

[T J · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But sooner or later all conduct and all life must rest on truth." It's a beautiful book. The "unjust condition of human life" is sooooo extensive that I don't know how to receive Darrow's admonition to "resist not evil." Homo sapiens are violent from time to time. I think we can reduce violence by following a path of justice based on love, and I agree that the "disorganized vicious would be far less powerful than the organized vicious." There's a very high percentage of truth about the nature of the violence upon which nation states rest. "Punishment to terrorize men from violating human order is like the threat of hell to terrorize souls into obedience to the law of God." We can reduce the degree of institutional terror in society by supporting the value of every life, through love, education, work, art, anti-racism, healthy food, healthy environments, and healthy care for our bodies and minds. We can't eradicate terror or hell. Nature provides hell and terror through disease, catastrophe, and death. We don't have to add to it through social and economic inequality and injustice. Darrow's closing sentence is true: "No human soul can be rightly reached except through charity, humanity and love."

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darrow for the win! Clarence Darrow was one of the most successful defenders of liberty and justice. He was a compassionate man who had deep and genuine sympathy for the ignorant, poor, and oppressed people. He claimed that all states, even democracies, wield their power to benefit the rich and powerful and to keep the poor and oppressed powerless. He opposed the death penalty claiming that he felt it was nothing but legalized murder. Clarence Darrow said it is a strange code of negative ethics that says a man should be punished for an evil act and not be be rewarded for a virtuous one. Men's lives are a strange mixture of good and evil. No life is wholly good, and no life is wholly bad. A life of great virtues may here and there be interspersed with an evil act. The law picks out the evil and ignores the good. I could quote the whole book. He wrote this in 1902 and it holds u. Fantastic!

[Bruce Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book follows on the heels of discovering Tolstoy’s nonfiction and his views on Christian anarchism. I find the philosophy intriguing and arguments persuasive but so difficult to put into practice in our society. They both illuminate Christs teachings and illustrate how religion/churches fall short. It makes one think.

[Kristyna · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first encounter with Clarence Darrow occurred when Kevin Spacey was playing the character at The Old Vic Theatre in London. What caught my interest, apart from Spacey's mesmerising performance, was a line uttered midway through the show: "The cause of crime is poverty, ignorance, hard luck, and generally youth." Then and there I knew I wanted to find out more about this American lawyer.

Unfortunately, Resist Not Evil is not as convincing as Darrow might have been in the courtroom. Darrow portrays the state as an entity, which only protects the interests of its rulers, yet he lacks a clearly structured argument, and thus also the persuasiveness of someone like Charles Tilly, who beautifully compared state-making to organised crime. Originally published in 1903, the book also suffers from its inability to react to the thoughts of famous international relations theorists, who were writing during (and after) the First World War, and who described the use of violence in international relations in great depth. In comparison, Darrow's views about complete disarmament seem quite naive.

When Resist Not Evil finally focuses on the conditions within the state, Darrow promotes the idea that causes of crime are environmental: that crime arises from poverty, lack of opportunities, the necessity to make a living. While I do agree that state should focus on building better schools, not better prisons (another thought mentioned in the play), his overall argument neglects the influence of free will, and the possibility that evil might exist even within a fair society.

That being said, Darrow makes a great number of interesting points. He emphasises that our justice system focuses on punishing 'bad actions' and offers no rewards for 'good actions'. He points out how nonsensical it is to imprison a perpetrator when it does no good to his victim. (I think Darrow would find African justice system, which focuses more on restorative as opposed to retributive justice quite interesting. For example, after the Rwandan genocide, the Gacaca courts were supposed to heal the community and help with reconciliation.) Darrow also claims that judging someone's life based on one action is wrong. He states that law is arbitrary – what's illegal in one state is not illegal in the other – and what's worse, even when decrees of courts are wrongful, citizens will be punished for their disobedience. He writes that there is no indisputable correlation between 'being a bad person' and 'committing a bad action' – for example, an inherently greedy man who inherited a fortune will never be tempted to break the law simply because of favourable circumstances. He says that we should judge others not solely by the temptation, to which they yielded, but also by the temptation, which they resisted.

And for all this, and many other thoughts, I am glad that I have read the book.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the past, I haven't written reviews of especially short books, but this one I enjoyed a great deal and had to write about it.

For those unaware, Darrow is the lawyer that defended Scopes and Sweet in the infamous "Monkey trial" and he also defended infamous (at the time) thrill killers Leopold and Loeb. Needless to say, Darrow had a great deal of experience with the law, with the State, and with criminals (or at least, criminals according to the State).

Darrow writes with fierce condemnation of the State, and then goes on to chastise the criminal justice system that it employs. It is refreshing to see a book - especially one from the early 1900's - that speaks against our absurd and futile form of retribution we call justice in this country (and indeed, that many have called justice throughout time!).

Throughout the book, Darrow notes how this system of justice has failed to prevent crime, and it very often ignores the intent and cause of the crime. Was the individual poor? Were they unintelligent? What motivated them? In my reflections on our criminal justice system, I have found myself coming to the same conclusion as Darrow on this. We need to consider the psychological factors behind the crime, and then work to prevent future crimes in a manner other than attempting to scare someone straight.

I like to think that Darrow, were he alive today, would be an enthusiastic supporter of the restorative model of justice (see below). Having just finished Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty", where he argued in favor of a more eye-for-an-eye system of justice in one chapter (the rest is a good read; see my review), this book was certainly a breath of fresh air. It is a shame that a debate was never able to happen between Rothbard and Darrow in regards to the appropriate model of criminal justice in a free society that values liberty.

You can get the book for free from the publisher here: https://mises.org/library/resist-not-...

For more information on restorative justice, you can look here: http://restorativejustice.org/

[Qasim Zafar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book, written mainly from the anarchist branch of libertarian philosophy. Though, I don't agree with the proposal of essentially a no-state solution; what I do love about this book is the empathetic look at criminal justice and what needs to be done in order not to forget that the criminal is there as a matter of circumstance (in most cases) and that we should not forget their humanity. Darrow even goes as far as to explore concepts of peaceful parenting, and how socially reproach behaviors which will not be conducive to producing an ideal outcome in people's personalities.

The main thing to keep in mind is that this book was originally published in 1902, and there are a lot of, especially psychological claims, which Darrow makes, that he does not substantiate with presentation of research, and for that reason where Darrow delves into the psychology of things, especially where improving the social situation is concerned, the writing comes off as statements of idealistic desires than psychology as such. None-the-less this is a very good read and I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in exploring non-violent propositions to ending violence and crime in society.

[Alan Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book's title comes from Matthew 5:39 and goes on to advice turning the other cheek. In this small book by Clarence Darrow he expands on his philosophy of non-violence and his concerns about the legal system. He argues that the state is formed in violence and is thus inevitably corrupt and he argues skilfully against capital punishment and imprisonment.

His proposal that the legal system has little to offer in the search or application of justice is well made and his swiftian arguments against the deterrent effects of capital punishment are clever and accurate. (A modest proposal for the most gory and public punishments for the encouragement of the others.

Although dated in its style it is still easy to read and has relatively few items which anchor it in its period.

[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are into philosophy and especially the follower of peaceful resistance, this is your book. Written in a clear language, intelligent and full of forgiveness towards human. I really can't praise it enough, one needs to read it. Unfortunately, no solution to human behavior is given. The reader is left with a feeling that strong will always rule the weak, and weak fates are already predetermined.

[Zachary Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short yet powerful book on the problems of a punished-based judiciary system. Some parts of the book stray off into contemporary pseudoscience like phrenology, but when Darrow writes about the core topic his words are always well chosen and the impact on the reader profound.